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Monthly Archives: April 2006

This is some code that I’ve been meaning to make available for public consumption for weeks, but we’ve been up to our necks with our RFID tender at Huddersfield recently.

The basic idea is to convert the XML output of HIP 2 and HIP 3 into a Perl data structure, which you can then use to repurpose your bib data and searches for other uses (e.g. to provide an OpenSearch interface).

The first chunk of code I’m making available provides a function (parseBib) that will convert the XML from a full bib page into a data structure. Given the v0.01, you should treat this as alpha code at best!

The above Perl script also contains some code to fetch the XML (using LWP) and will also dump (using Data::Dumper) the resulting Perl data structure to an output text file (dump_output.txt). I’ve also uploaded the code as a CGI file that you can run to display the Data::Dumper output – e.g.:

A couple of weeks ago I added logging to five of our OPAC tweaks to see if they were being used, and also which is the most popular. We’re not in a particularly busy period at the University, so I would expect usage to be higher during peak periods. Also, I only logged clicks coming from our 46 dedicated catalogue PCs and I’ve excluded stats from the weekends.

On average, we got 6 clicks per weekday on the “other editions” links.

Number 4 – Keyword Suggestions

On average, we got 14 clicks per weekday on the “serendipity” suggestions.

Number 3 – Similar Subjects

On average, we got 36 clicks on the “items with similar subjects” suggestions. Interestingly, the number of clicks has risen consistently throughout the 2 week period — we’ve not advertised any of these features, so people are using them when they stumble across them.

Here’s a slightly delayed write up for the 2 day Executive Roadshow event at the Crowne Palza, Birmingham.

Normally I’d try and blog live but sadly the Crowne Plaza regarded internet access in the hotel rooms (which I’d already paid for) as being something entirely different to wireless access in the rest of the hotel (for which I’d need to pay separately).

This is in response to an email Anne Barnard posted to the Horizon-L mailing list:

I have my global settings session timeout set to 5 minutes, and my search timeout set to 2 minutes. I’m starting to get complaints from remote users that they timeout to quickly. How long are other libraries making their settings? We’re a public library and people frequently walk away without logging out.

I didn’t see anyplace where this could be set for profiles rather than globally.

Assuming that your public OPACs have a specific range of IP addresses allocated to them (e.g. you’ve set them up on their own subnet), then it’s possible to tweak the expiretimer.xsl to only use the timeout for those machines: